Book of the Week, crime, mystery

Book of the Week: The Cornish Coast Murder

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A short and sweet BotW post this week.  I didn’t finish as much as I wanted last week – and some of what I finished was never going to be a contender for a slot here.  But the Cornish Coast Murder perked me up at the end of the week and snuck in under the wire.

Copy of The Cornish Coast Murder

The Cornish Coast Murder sees an armchair murder mystery novel enthusiast with an actual real life crime on his doorstep.  Reverend Dodd and his friend Dr Pendrill meet up once a week to talk detective fiction and open their latest delivery from the library. But one night during their chat, a panicked phone call comes through from a neighbour, Ruth Tregarthen saying that her uncle has been shot.  There are no obvious clues and the police seem baffled so Reverend Dodd starts to help investigate the crime using his knowledge of crime fiction to help him.

This is the first in the Inspector Bigswell series – and the second John Bude* that I’ve read.  This is a nice fun read – but it’s not as complex or ingenious as some of the authors that Reverend Dodd reads with his friend.  I had a fair idea where it was going – and although I wasn’t entirely right it meant that I wasn’t as entirely gripped as I am with some similar books.  But this was Bude’s fist book so perhaps that’s not surprising that it’s not perfect – and certainly the other Bude I’ve read (the Sussex Downs Murder)* was more complex – although the solution to that is rather cliched now.  Anyway – it’s an enjoyable read and a if you’ve got an interest in Golden Age crime novels it’s well worth a look.

My copy of the Cornish Coast Murder was the rather pretty British Library Crime Classics edition – so you may well be able to find it in your local bookshop.  I’ve certainly seen them in various Waterstones.  The Kindle edition is free if you’re in Kindle Unlimited or it’s £2.99 to buy.

Happy Reading!

*Editors note:  I realised after I posted this that Sussex Downs was also a BotW – back in June last year.  I am nothing if not predictable!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: September 3 – September 9

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I’ve been spending my time working my way through the Still Reading list so not as much other stuff read this week as usual.

Read:

The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan

The Abbey Girls in Town by Elsie J Oxenham

Too Many Crooks Spoil the Plot by Sarah Osborne

Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude

Started:

Negroland by Margo Jefferson

Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge

Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen

Still reading:

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

No books bought! A minor miracle has occurred!

Authors I love, Book of the Week, fiction, new releases, women's fiction

Book of the Week: Anyone for Seconds

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This week’s BotW is the new Laurie Graham, which managed to sneak into the world without me noticing.  At least I noticed it just after it was released, so I’m only posting this 12 days after release.  Anyway, regular readers of this blog will be aware of my long-standing love for Laurie Graham’s books. Gone with the Windsors is one of my all-time favourites – and I consider it (and her) an under-appreciated gem.  Her last book, The Early Birds was a Reccommendsday pick last year and The Grand Duchess of Nowhere was one of the first books that I reviewed for Novelicious back in the day. I have most of her books as actual books and they live on my downstairs bookshelf (for easy access) and I have all the ones I don’t have physical copies of on ebook.  And a couple of them as both.  I even have two paperback copies of Gone with the Windsors.  Ahem.

Cover of Anyone for Seconds

Anyway, at the start of Anyone for Seconds, former TV chef Lizzie Partridge runs away from home in a desperate bid for sympathy and attention.  She’s fed up of her life – she’s the wrong side of sixty and ever since she lost her TV gig, after throwing chocolate mousse at the presenter of Midlands This Morning, nothing seems to have gone her way.  Her partner has left her, her mother is driving her mad, she doesn’t seem to ahve anything in common with her high-power lawyer daughter – and now her last bit of work (a magazine cookery column) has been axed as well.  Over the course of her wet week in off-season  Aberystwyth, she has a bit of an epiphany and starts to think there might be a new future in the offing.  Then her nephew’s TV producer girlfriend comes up with the idea of reuniting her with her former nemesis for a new TV show.  Is Lizzie’s life looking up?

Lizzie’s earlier adventures, leading up to the infamous mousse incident, are the subject of one of Graham’s earlier books, Perfect Meringues, which came out 21 years ago.  Those days were the tail end of the era when local TV news could make you into a big star – my local bulletin used to have its own chef, who I think did a good line in cookery demonstrations to WIs across the East of England  At any rate I’m fairly sure one (maybe two) of the recipes I copied out of my mum’s cookbook when I was first getting into cooking came from one he did for the Northampton Federation.  And pretty much every year at panto season you’ll spot a semi-familiar face on a poster who’s still managing to live off their local TV fame of yesteryear.  And this makes Lizzie and her friend Louie’s adventures terribly believable and very, very funny.

I read this book as my treat for my weekend working train journeys and it was an absolute delight.  Graham has a brilliant eye for the ridiculous and manages to skewer this sort of fading fame very well.  And Lizzie’s inner voice is pure Graham – funny, dark, sarcastic and with an observant eye on others, but not as much self-awareness as she thinks.  I could have read pages more of the exploits of Lizzie and her friends – there are definitely a few things left not as resolved as I could have wanted.  There aren’t enough books with leading ladies who are over 60, and Lizzie is definitely not a fading old lady in a twinset and pearls. She’s spunky and fun and not done with life and love yet – and anyway she hasn’t got a bank balance to sit back and retire.  And even if she had, her mother wouldn’t let her and, after all what would she do – her daughter doesn’t want Lizzie’s help as she raises her gender-neutral, sugar-free future genius son.  This was perfect book to beat my end of summer blues.

My copy of Anyone for Seconds came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in hardback, Kindle and Kobo.  I have no idea how easy it will be to find in bookshops – but you should be able to order it and I definitely encourage you to check out Graham’s books.  If you want to read Perfect Meringues first, it’s on Kindle and Kobo for £3.99 which seems to be about the standard price for all of Graham’s books at the moment – except for this new one.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: August 27 – September 2

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Finally finished The Templars this week – it was interesting, but really not my favourite period of history, so it felt like a bit of a slog.  You live and learn!

Read:

Maybe For You by Nicole McLaughlin

Video Killed the Radio Star by Duncan MacMaster

Yes We (Still) Can by Dan Pfeiffer

After You With the Pistol by Kyril Bonfiglioli

Rivers of London: Water Weed 3 by Ben Aaronovitch et al

Anyone for Seconds? by Laurie Graham

The Templars by Dan Jones

Started:

n/a

Still reading:

The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

Two ebooks bought.

books, stats

August Stats

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New books read this month: 31*

Books from the to-read pile: 14

Ebooks read: 15

Books from the Library book pile: 1

Non-fiction books: 7

#ReadHarder categories completed: 9

Pop Sugar categories completed: 13

Most read author: Andrew Cartmel (1 book and 1 comic)

Books read this year:  258

Books bought: 7 ebooks, 5 ebooks

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf: 568 (I don’t have copies of all of these!)

*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics (3 this month)

historical, new releases, Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: The Governess Game

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Bonus post this week – because the new Tessa Dare book came out yesterday.  I read it back at the start of the month and really, really enjoyed it.  It is the second book in the Girl Meets Duke series and features the romance between one of the friends of the heroine of the first book and a man you saw her run into in that book.  The Duchess Deal was a BotW back in May, and is also well worth reading.

Cover of The Governess Game

Alexandra Mountbatten makes a living by setting clocks in the London houses of the rich.  But when she loses her equipment, she finds herself the governess to two out of control orphans who are in the care of a renowned libertine.  Alexandra knows that what they need is a stable, loving home.  Chase is the heir to a duke and lives by one rule: no attachments.  He won’t settle down and he doesn’t want anyone depending on him.  He knows he’s not to be trusted – all he wants is for his new governess to turn his wards into proper young ladies so that they can find men that they can rely on when they grow up.  And we all know where this is going.  It’s got a grumpy scared to love rakish hero with two children to take care of, a very wary accidental governess who sees the job as her ticket to her own independence and a bit of forced proximity. Bingo, my catnip.

The dialogue is sparky, the characters are great from the hero and heroine, right the way through all the minor characters.  I loved the running joke about the funerals.  You’ll get it when you read it – but if I tell you it’ll spoil it.  Here’s what the author had to say about it on twitter:

And if that doesn’t make you want to read it, I don’t know what will.  Anyway, if I had one quibble, it’s that the heroine’s surname is Mountbatten which I *think* originated as one of the invented surnames for some of the British end of the Royal Family when they were Anglicizing things during World War One – in this case the bits of the Battenburg family that married Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter and one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters.  It’s also the one that Prince Philip adopted just before he married the then Princess Elizabeth – meaning the current British royal family has the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.  If you’re not a massive nerd like me, it probably won’t bother you, but it made me think of Prince Philip every time it was mentioned.*  I’m sorry if by mentioning it I’ve caused the same issue for you.

My copy came via NetGalley, but The Governess Game is available on Kindle and Kobo and if it’s anything like the Duchess Deal it may pop up in larger supermarket book selections and some of the bigger bookshops when it comes out in paperback in the UK next week.  If not, order it from your local friendly indie.

Happy Reading!

*Oddly not the only romance novel I’ve read recently that has done this.

Book of the Week, detective, mystery, Series I love

Book of the Week: The Mystery of Three Quarters

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This week’s BotW is the new Poirot continuation by Sophie Hannah – which happened to come out last week too so for once my review is actually timely!  Regular readers will know that I love Golden Age mystery novels (witness last week’s reading list which included the complete short stories of my beloved Peter Wimsey and a Patricia Wentworth novel) and also that I have a mixed record with continuations of beloved series, so the fact that this is popping up here today is Good News.

Cover of The Mystery of Three Quarters

As he returns home from lunch one day Hercule Poirot is accosted by an irate woman who threatens him with a lawsuit because she has received a letter from him accusing her of murder.  Poirot has written no such letter but is unable to convince her.  Soon after a young man appears who has received a similar letter.  The next day two more strangers proclaim their innocence to him after receiving letters.  So who is writing the letters in Poirot’s name – and why are they so determined to accuse people of the murder of Barnabas Pandy?This has got an intriguing premise and a solution that I didn’t see coming. I read this across the course of 24 hours and was annoyed that it was over so fast. This is the third Poirot novel from Hannah and I have read the first (The Monogram Murders) but not the second (The Closed Casket) and reading my review of the first one back, I had some concerns about whether it felt enough like a Poirot story – and this one pretty much did to me. I think making the narrator not Poirot is a very good decision – as is not falling back on Poirot clichés like “leetle grey cells”. And as the narrator is a Hannah invention rather than Captain Hastings that also means that there’s freedom to analyse Poirot’s quirks and processes in a different way rather than trying to continue in someone else’s voice.

And maybe that’s why this works for me more than most of the Wimsey continuations do. I’m yet to read an Albert Campion continuation so I’ll see how one of those falls between these two continuations to work out whether that is what makes continuations work better for me. And after this I’ll definitely be looking out for The Closed Casket to read when I get a chance.

My copy of The Mystery of Three Quarters came via NetGalley, but you should be able to find it in hardback in all good bookshops and on Amazon as well as in Kindle and on Kobo. The paperback isn’t out until next year – although I suspect this will have an airport paperback edition if you’re yet to go on your holidays.

Happy reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: August 20 – August 26

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Another busy week…

Read:

Mrs Roosevelt’s Confidante by Susan Elia McNeal

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1: Cosmic Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis

The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah

Lord Peter Wimsey: Complete Short Stories by Dorothy L Sayers

The Case of William Smith by Patricia Wentworth

Toucan Keep a Secret by Donna Andrew

Staged to Death by Karen Rose Smith

Started:

Yes We (Still) Can by Dan Pfeiffer

Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

Maybe For You by Nicole McLaughlin

Still reading:

The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan

The Templars by Dan Jones

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

Mrs Roosevelt’s Confidante by Susan Elia McNeal

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

Two ebooks and two book-books bought.

Children's books, Series I love

Bank Holiday Bonus post: Verity goes to a Book Conference

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I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about this here, but actually, I can’t help myself.   At the end of July I went to the Sixth Bristol Conference on Twentieth-Century Schoolgirls and Their Books.  If you’ve been hanging around here for a while you’ll know that one of my big bookish passions are school stories – and one of my most enduring loves are the Chalet School series.  And this was a gathering of over 100 people who love all the same books as me to listen to talks about them, chat to people about them and yes, buy more of them.

Wills Hall quadrangle

As it’s the centenary of the end of World War One, the theme this year was War and most (although not all) of the talks had that as a theme linking them together.  Now I am quite a young enthusiast in the genre – the last run of Chalet School paperbacks came out when I was in secondary school and they were one of the last classic series left in print – so I discovered a lot of new authors at the conference – and was able to pick up books by some of them.  You may have spotted some of my purchases popping up in Week in Books and Book of the Week posts.

My book purchases!

What was really, really wonderful was meeting up with people who love the same things that I do.  I think I had underestimated how wonderful it would be to be able to talk to other people who have read the same books that I have.  I mean all of my friends – and most of my work colleagues  – know that I love reading and read a lot (some of them even read this blog) and we have conversations about books, but I never really get to talk about this bit of my bookish life because I’m meant to be a grownup reading adult books – and no one has read a lot of these books any way even when they were younger.

Saturday night dinner in the Hall

So I guess what this boils down to is find yourself opportunities to go and hang out with other people who are into what you’re into.  You’ll make some friends, learn some new things and have a marvellous time.  I’ve already got the next conference (in 2020!) in my diary.

Happy Bank Holiday!

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: The Birth of South Korean Cool

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It was very easy to pick this week’s BotW – I raced through Euny Hong’s the Birth of South Korean Cool and found it absolutely fascinating.  It had been on my to-read list for a while after I heard it recommended on one of the podcasts that I listen to – so long in fact that I can’t remember which podcast.  But where ever the recommendation came from – it was a really good one.

Paperback copy of the Birth of Korean Cool

The book’s subtitle is “How one nation is conquering the world through pop culture” and that is exactly what the book sets out to prove – and it makes a compelling arguement.  Euny Hong moved to South Korea in 1985 when her father got a job at a South Korean university.  He and her mother had left 20 years previously to go to graduate school and, like many of their contemporaries had never gone back.  The South Korean government was trying to get them back as they worked on their plan to transform the country from a third world military dictatorship into a first world democracy.  Euny grew up as South Korea remade itself – on a scale that I really hadn’t quite comprehended.

Across chapters on schooling, han, kimchi, K-Pop, K-Drama and more, Hong looks at all the work and planning that went in behind the scenes and the (relatively) long game masterplan from the South Korean government to transform itself from the inside out.  First published in 2014, some of the details in this about the relationship with North Korea have obviously dated a little, but that is not the main focus of the book and doesn’t affect the central thesis so it didn’t cause me any problems.  I was staggered at the lengths and the risks and the investment that the government went to – I can’t imagine the British government doing anything similar – let alone the American one.  But it paid off – it is paying off – and now armed with all the information and background from this book I’ll be watching more closely to see how the Korean revolution continues to unfold.  I’m not a big pop music listener, but the Korean revolution has even got to me – I’ve been buying some Korean beauty products for a couple of years!

I got my copy secondhand because it seems to be out of print in the UK, so if you want a physical copy that may be your only option – unless you have an amazon.com account where they still seem to have stock.  It is available on Kindle and Kobo though – but it’s £9.99 at time of writing, so you might want to add it to your watch list and see if there’s any variation going on.  I’m off to try and find some K-pop playlists so I can match up the names in the book with some songs.

Happy reading!